


Grudge

by VenatorNoctis



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Comfort, Discovering Powers, Gen, Pastfic, Probably Contradicted by Canon Somewhere, Villains having feelings, ish, unlikely friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 17:28:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14501955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VenatorNoctis/pseuds/VenatorNoctis
Summary: After his death he flees into the wilderness.





	Grudge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dustofwarfare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustofwarfare/gifts).



> "HEY VEN WRITE A STORY ABOUT ARDYN GETTING COMFORTED BY TONBERRIES" - dustofwarfare, probably
> 
> I can't even pretend to be anything but a filthy villain apologist here but look, you've SEEN him. you KNOW what his deal is. what a babe.

After his death he flees into the wilderness. Nothing makes sense anymore. Nothing has made sense since the Crystal flung him away, since his brother's followers overpowered him and strung him up to die—since he saw the watery, colorless space of the Beyond open before him and then heave violently shut again, casting him back into his discarded body. He's fever-hot, burning up with the Scourge he tried to banish by filtering it through his own system, but other than the heat he's not showing symptoms of sickness. No sweating, no chills, no aches, no exhaustion. The opposite of exhaustion, in fact; he's been moving for a day and a night and the next day again, steadily, out of Leide and into the forests of Duscae, and he hasn't felt a need for rest.

As the sun goes down for a second time he comes to a halt. Even if they're wondering what happened to his body, Somnus' men won't be searching this far out. Ardyn finds a mossy clearing in the forest and sits down there, considering things like food and sleep and whether he has any need for either anymore.

Darkness falls over the forest, turning warm greens and golds into deep, inky blues and purples. Colors usually disappear in the darkness, but tonight they don't, and instead Ardyn finds himself captivated by them, the whole subtle palette that the night reveals. Death has changed him.

He can feel presences shifting through the distant dark, like ripples through water lapping against his skin when a distant creature moves. They don't come near but they touch the edge of his awareness and slide away again. He thinks it might have been happening the previous night, too, when he was too busy hiking across the western Leiden plateaus to pay much attention to it. Not in the daytime, but ever since the sun disappeared, they've been flickering at the edge of his consciousness.

They're as touched by the Scourge as he is. That's why he can feel them out there. 

He closes his eyes and tries to pay closer attention, to see if he can determine more about them. The first one he finds is almost incomprehensible, just a wet bubbling hunger that feels desperate as much as wicked. It vanishes almost immediately. The next one hungers, too, but differently; it feels _curious_ as its awareness brushes his, and Ardyn thinks he can feel it taking his measure before making the decision to drift away into the dark. A few minutes later a huge, hollow presence echoes with a need to defend and confusion about what's left for it to protect. Ardyn very carefully does not think about Gilgamesh at all.

There is so much more to daemons than anyone has realized. —Ah, and there's a thought: does he count among that number now?

Ardyn leans back against the trunk of the tree behind him, looking at his hands, looking at the abrasions the ropes left on his wrists. They're just as vivid now as they were right after his death; he supposes it makes sense that a dead body wouldn't heal. He reaches for his magic for the first time since then, expecting it to not respond—dead bodies not healing, et cetera. But _something_ waits in his core for him to call on it, no longer the dawn-sky blue and white warmth that let him heal but a black flame shot through with violet, licking hungry and hot, eager to respond to his will.

"Those utter fools," he murmurs, and doesn't know if he means the mortals who executed him or the gods who gave them cause. He was tainted by this darkness before, yes, that _happens_ when you expose yourself to as much of a contagion as he did—but now he's nothing but. They suffocated what was left of his humanity and left him only this.

Another daemon presence tickles at the edge of his mind and he realizes now why they've all been so careful not to approach. They'll be seeing _him_ as a daemon, an unfamiliar one, not their rightful prey and an uncertain amount of danger. Not quite wild animals and not quite people, but not nearly so hard to understand as anyone believes.

Before this one can retreat, Ardyn reaches out to it. He doesn't know how much they understand words but he tries to project a feeling of welcome, of being curious and not hostile. For a moment he isn't sure if the daemon is receptive at all, but then a second presence joins the first one, the same type, and he starts to be able to feel their approach. The sense he gets from their minds—if that's the word—is one of stubbornness, of determination. They don't have the frantic energy of some of the others he's felt already but they're implacable.

They are also, it turns out, remarkably charming. The pair of them waddle out of the trees in tandem, tiny creatures in dark robes, with rounded heads and big bright eyes. They carry knives and lanterns in what looks an awful lot like a symbolic gesture; were they an illustration in a manuscript, Ardyn would expect them to represent vigilance, or perhaps even natural philosophy, with the light of knowledge and the blade of the insightful mind.

"Good evening," he says to his little philosophers. "Care to keep a vagabond company for a while?"

The daemons look at each other for a moment. Ardyn decides to call the yellower one Democritus and the bluer one Heraclitus. They don't make any noises and they don't appear to gesture in any way, but when they turn back toward him they both start shuffling forward again.

"My thanks," Ardyn says. "I find myself rather at the end of my rope, to use an incredibly tasteless turn of phrase. I could use the counsel of a couple of serious thinkers like you."

Democritus lifts its lantern higher, which Ardyn takes to mean _please, tell us your troubles_. How very kind.

He starts at the beginning, with the appearance of the Starscourge among his people. His new friends are excellent listeners, even though Heraclitus makes a gesture that seems rather rude at the idea of removing the Scourge from the afflicted persons. Well, maybe it has a point. Not as though that ended well, is it?

By the time Ardyn is describing his triumphant arrival in the Crown City (on the back of Adephagia, the most cantankerous and difficult and perfect chocobo in existence—may she ruin the life of whoever has tried to take ownership of her), Democritus is sitting in his lap and Heraclitus is leaning against his side, where he can wrap an arm around it. Maybe they're just drawn to his warmth, but people have the same suspicion of cats and like them well enough anyway. 

Despite his best efforts to sound unaffected by all his travails, the bitterness creeps into his tone when he tells them about the Crystal, about being rejected for the very thing that made his people cheer his name. Democritus stretches up to bonk its little round snout against his chin.

"Thank you, darling," he says. "It isn't fair at all, is it? Bastards. And of course it gets worse." Heraclitus fidgets with outrage and Ardyn rubs its back consolingly, possibly to console himself as well.

He tells them about his damnable brother, worrying in private and moralizing in public, saying exactly what the Hexatheon want to hear about Ardyn's too-ambitious project and of course being rewarded for it with the kingship that Ardyn deserved. He tells them about his brother's stupid mob of followers, who wouldn't suffer the accursed to live—and why didn't Somnus _stop_ them? If he worried as much as he pretended to, if he still cared at all about the brother he'd usurped, why—?

When his voice cracks and he can taste sulfur and smoke in his throat, Ardyn stops. The Scourge that sleeps inside his form isn't sleeping now so much as _seething_ , bubbling up raw and hot with the power to destroy. "I do apologize, my friends. In reflecting on my recent adventures I find I'm just a bit furious."

Democritus and Heraclitus stare at him with their huge luminous eyes and he has the distinct impression they think his anger is entirely justified. What good new friends.

"I hate them," he says, trying out the words. He spent the best part of his life being careful not to indulge feelings like that; they're antithetical to the healing process. But the best part of his life, which is to say _his life_ , is over now, isn't it? What he has left is something else. His little daemons understand the feeling. He can tell. 

Even thinking of the people he saved brings no solace. How many of them went on to believe that very act made him impure? How many of them were there to watch him die?

But those betrayals are mere details. Unimportant in comparison with the ones he really cares about, the bastard gods and the hypocritical dynasty they've decided to establish without him. Those are the ones he's really angry with.

"I want to ruin them," he says. The magic seated behind his ribs flares up, the feverish hunger of the Scourge, the flame that devours. Ardyn looks down at his dear little friends. "It's madness, isn't it? A dead man, animated by the very thing he spent his life fighting, swearing vengeance on the gods themselves. It's absurd. And yet I find I don't care. I want to make them suffer."

Democritus and Heraclitus both raise their knives. Slowly, deliberately, perfectly in tandem, they mime the act of stabbing someone.

"You understand," Ardyn says. They stare up at him, unblinking, and make the stabbing motion again. "Yes." He gathers them up in his arms, two charming little monsters who radiate patience and certainty and hatred. "You understand me perfectly."


End file.
